3 . Lazer loves running, and although he experiences a series of potentially fatal heart problems, he always cherishes a new finish line to inspire his _______.

By 2008, Lazer had undergone six heart _______, and the last one left him _______. In an attempt to feel_______, he decided to_______ his diet and, at the suggestion of a friend, started drinking more nutrient-packed juices._______, he began to feel good enough to _______ his sneakers and hit the_______again.

“After _______ the hospital, my goal was not to ________. I wanted to live my life as I desired, and that meant to ________ running and be in the best shape that I can,” he says. “I wasn’t going to be sedentary and sit on a sofa and ________ the remote. The big thing for me was that I wanted my own life. I was going to do everything I could to get my life back.”

To Lazer, that meant running, since it was such a big part of that life. ________, just months after that sixth surgery in 2008, he was back________ the starting line of the Las Vegas 26.2. And this past November, he crossed the finish line of his 18^th ________ race.

Lazer ________ running as one of the main reasons he’s lived well beyond that one-year prognosis he got back in 2004. “I believe I started running ________ knowing that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be living too ________,” he says. “Running is a part of who I am—I am ________ to be the best that I possibly can be. It’s such a huge part of my life that my life seems out of order if I’m injured or I can’t run. It’s kind of my ________.”

4 . Rishi Sharma, a young man, is living his life differently. When he was a kid, Sharma was __ by the men who __ World War II. They were lucky to __ bullets (子弹), finally returning home and living a simple life, which interested Sharma very much. Sharma watched many documentaries on WWII and became __ that some of these men were still alive and he could __ them.

One day, Sharma came across the information that Lyle Bouck, a WWII hero, was living quite near his home. __, Sharma looked up the __ and dialed. Soon after, he __ visiting military veterans (退伍军人) in nursing homes.

Since graduation from high school, Sharma has made it his __ to interview as many WWII veterans as he can. Because many of them are in their 80s and 90s, Sharma __ that he has just around 10 years before the veterans of the so-called greatest generation are gone. Therefore, he’s __ everything else in his life — college, dating and hunting a job — to __ himself to this cause.

For each veteran __, Sharma creates a DVD of their stories. These men are known for their stoicism (淡泊) and the __ to discuss what happened during the war. __, with frequent contact with the veterans, they’re finally __ to share their stories.

Sharma tried to meet at least one WWII veteran every day until the last of them __. In May 2016, Sharma founded Heroes of the Second World War, a non-profit organization aiming to __ the stories of WWII veterans. He also launched a GoFundMe page which has __ in more than $186,000 up to now. Sharma uses that money to pay for his travel and __ equipment. He hopes to collect as many stories as he can — for their sakes, and for ours.

5 . One British school is finding that allowing children to listen to music or even to have the TV on while studying is helping improve grades.______ your teenager starts a family quarrel by sitting in an armchair listening to music while doing his homework, why not ______ a simple experiment? ______ taking the heavy handed(严厉的)line of ______ him to his bedroom to get on with it ______, let him do the homework the ______ he wants. You might well find that his essay is more sparkling than ______ he’s done before.

According to the research of Millfield preschool, around 20% of youngsters ______ best with background music, 10% excel(突出) when allowed to ______ their work with short walks around the room while up to 80% can concentrate ______ if allowed to fiddle(用手拨弄)with a small object.

The research has advised the school to adopt a complete ______ approach, analyzing pupils to discover which learning style _____ them best then letting them do their work listening to music or______ lying down.______ parents at first regarded the ______ as a layabout’s(懒散闲荡的人) deed but many are now applying it at______ where children are also allowed to do their work ______ the television on.

”I ______ to work on the floor with music on low,” admits Susan, 13, a day girl.”At first my parents thought I was skiving (逃避),but my ______ persuaded them to look at my homework and when they saw it was okay, they ______.”

6 . Ecology is a complicated thing. Given the facts that elephant damage often kills trees and bush fires often kill trees, it would be________to assume that a combination of the two would make things worse. Contrary to this assumption, ________, as the recently-published research by Benjamin Wigley shows, if a tree has already been damaged, fire can________help to make things better.

One common way in which elephants harm trees is by stripping(剥) them of their bark(树皮). Dr Wigley, who did indeed start from the obvious________, set off to find out how much worse bush fires would make the effects of this bark stripping. To serve this purpose, he set up a study in the Kruger National Park. Since 1954, the Kruger has been the site of experiments in which plots of land have been burned________, to understand the effects of fire on plain ecology. In these experiments, Dr Wigley looked at trees in three different zones, in one of which, the trees were burned every year; in the second, they were burned every other year, while the third zone, by contrast, was actively________fire. To keep things consistent, he looked at the fate of the same tree species, the marula(马鲁拉树), in all three zones. He picked marulas because they are particular________of elephant activity. Their fruit are delicious, and prized by elephants and people alike. But elephants also seem to enjoy eating their bark. In July 2016 he and his colleagues identified 20 marulas in every zone and used special tools to________from each of them a circular section of bark 5 cm in diameter. Having imposed this damage, they________the wounds over the course of the following two years, to see what would happen. To their________, they discovered that the wounds of trees in fire zones recovered far better than those of trees that had seen no fires at all. Wounded trees in the annual burn zone re-grew 98% of their lost________during the two years of the study. Those living in the biennial(两年一次的) burn zone re-grew 92% of it. But those in the zone where fires were________re-grew only 72%.

The researchers also found something else when they were measuring the trees’ wounds: ants. Ten of the 20 trees in the fire-prevention zone developed ant colonies in their wounds. The ants in question were a species that is known to damage trees and is supposed to________tissue healing. By contrast, only five trees in the biennial burn zone and three in the annual zone developed ants’ nests in their wounds. It looks, therefore, as if bush fires are treating trees’ wounds by killing ants that might________colonize and damage them. Though such fires are surely harmful to healthy trees, it seems, in an example of two negatives making a positive, as if they are actually________to sick ones.

7 . In the Fake News Era, Building Trust with Consumers Is Crucial

With consumers growing increasingly frustrated with online advertising and privacy concerns, how to you convince shoppers to buy your narrative（叙述）, let alone your product?

A recent report by Trust-Radius, a software review company that connects buyers and vendors（供应商）, may be able to shed some light. Among other interesting findings, it turns out that it may actually benefit brands to be painfully _____ about their products.

Consumer awareness of influencer marketing tactics（策略）is increasing. _____   according to the report, most consumers trust online peer _____ as much as recommendations from friends -- and well above company advertising message. Feedback from everyday folks, it seems, actually carries more _____ than a brand ambassador （大使）from an out-of-reach personality.

Transparency（透明度）is crucial. The report found that there is a large trust _____ between vendors and buyers. While vendors believe they are transparent, most buyers don’t appear to see it. During the sales process, for example, 85 percent of vendors -- _____ to be open about their product’s limitations during the sales process -- but   only 36 percent of buyers share that same view. The reality is, consumers don’t expect any products to be _____ -- they just want to enter relationships with their eyes wide open so that they can _____ the options that are best for   them. They also want brands to be more _____. 66 percent of consumers say they will leave a company if they feel they are being treated like a number and not an individual.

Along with the combination of take news, advertising fraud, and data leaks, there have been fake reviews as well. Review sites have been _____ giving preferential（优惠的）treatment to paid advertisers, and consumers are increasingly discerning（有辨别力的）, as a result. _____, review sites are not our only source of peer reviews, with social media providing customer experiences on a second - to - second basis. When brands treat every _____ with a customer as a potential review, they’ll start paying more attention to detail, and being alert to delivering a valued and memorable experience every time. Taking feedback seriously also lets current customers feel valued and respected and makes your business seem more approachable. This helps secure _____, and often, these customers   will become brand ambassadors to their friends, family and people they meet online.

The challenge for brands today is determining how to use the _____ of the consumer to their advantage. In an age of cutting - edge technology, artificial intelligence, and self-service customer care, it’s odd to acknowledge that the best way to build trust with your customers is by holding an open _____ with your customers. Being more human, transparent, and listening to what people are saying will see your company thrive in an era marked by consumer suspicion.

8 . The expression, "everybody's doing it," is very much at the center of the concept of peer pressure. It is a social influence applied on an individual in order to get that person to act or believe in a(n) ___ way as a larger group. This influence can be negative or positive, and can exist in both large and small groups.

People are social creatures by nature, and so it is hardly ___that some part of their self-respect comes from the approval of others. This instinct explains why the approval of peers, and the fear of ____, is such a powerful force in many people's lives. This instinct drives people to dress one way at home and another way at work, or to answer a simple “fine" when a stranger asks "how are you?" even if it is not necessarily true. There is a(n) _____aspect to this: it helps society to function efficiently, and encourages a general level of self-discipline that ___day-to-day interaction between people.

For certain individuals, seeking social acceptance is so important that it becomes a(n) ___: in order to satisfy the desire, they may go so far as to ___their sense of right and wrong. Teens and young adults may feel forced to use drugs, or join gangs that ____criminal behavior. Mature adults may sometimes feel ___ to cover up illegal activity at the company where they work, or end up in debt because they are unable to hold back the desire to buy a house or car that they can't afford in an effort to ___ the peers.

However, peer pressure is not always negative. A student whose friends are good at ___may be urged to work harder and get good grades. Players on a sports team may feel driven to play harder in order to help the team win. This type of ___can also get a friend off drugs, or to help an adult take up a good habit or drop a bad one.

Although peer pressure is sometimes quite obvious, it can also be so ___that a person may not even notice that it is affecting his or her behavior. For this reason, when making important decisions, simply going with a(n) ___is risky. Instead, people should seriously consider why they feel drawn to taking a particular action, and whether the real ____ is simply that everyone else is doing the same thing.

9 . Since 1960, considerable scientific researches have been done on chimps in their natural habitats. Astonishingly, scientists have found out that the social______of Chimps are very similar to humans. Chimps will______in certain ways, like gathering in war parties to protect their territory. But beyond the minimum requirements as social beings, they have little instinct to______one another. Chimps in the wild seek food for themselves. Even chimp mothers regularly______to share food with their children. who are able from a young age to gather their own food?

In the laboratory, chimps don't______share food either. If a chimp is put in a cage where he can pull in one plate of food for himself or, with no greater effort, a plate that also provides food for a neighbor to the next cage, he will pull   ____—he just doesn't care whether his neighbor gets fed or not. Chimps are truly selfish.

Human children,______, are extremely cooperative From the earliest ages, they decide to help others, to share information and to participate in achieving common goals. The psychologist Michael Tomasello has studied this____   in a series of experiments with very young children. He finds that if babies aged 18 months see a worried adult with hands full trying to open a door, almost all will immediately try to help.

There are several reasons to believe that the urges to help, inform and share are not taught, but naturally______in young children. One is that these______appear at a very young age before most parents have started to train their children to behave______. Another is that the helping behaviors are not improved if the children are rewarded. A third reason is that social intelligence______in children before their general cognitive skills, at least when compared with chimps In tests conducted by Tomasello, the human children did no better than the chimps on the______world tests but were considerably better at understanding the social world.

The core of what children's minds have and chimps' don't is what Tomasello calls shared intentionality. Part of this ability is that they can______what others know or are thinking. But beyond that, even very young children want to be part of a shared purpose. They actively seek to be part of a "we", a group that intends to work toward a(n)______goal.

10 . A true reality of retirement planning is that your future is riding on the quality of your assumptions. Humble ______ can be dangerous.

For example, eight years into this bull market, expecting stocks to deliver as strong returns over the next decade is an uncertain proposition many are nonetheless ______.

Another potential ______ assumption is that you will be able to keep working past 65. Yet the recently released 2017 Retirement Confidence Survey by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute finds that more than half of workers say they expect to still be on the clock past age 65. ______, less than 15 percent of today's retirees kept working that long.

"If you plan on working longer as a way to get by in retirement, you are going to be in trouble," says Craig Copeland, senior research associate at EBRI. "It should be a ______ to a solid savings and spending plan, not the foundation."

It's simply too ______ to assume you will indeed be able to work longer. A survey by the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies found that nearly two-thirds of retirees left the workforce earlier than expected because they were laid off, reorganized out of a position, or due to general unhappiness with a job. Only 16 percent of retirees who ______ the work force earlier than they expected did so because they felt they could ______ afford to.

______, a new report from Prudential puts a dollar value on why your current employer may not be inclined (倾向于) to do back flips to keep an older you happy and engaged. The estimated one-year cost to a firm when an employee ______ retirement: $50,000.

Prudential estimates that on a company-wide level, delayed retirement can ______   overall workforce costs by 1 percent to 1.5 percent. That's not nothing. And it goes a long way in explaining why employers may be more inclined to focus on "financial wellness" strategies to get workers ready to retire ______ than programs to help workers delay retirement.

Fewer than one-third of employees surveyed by TCRS report their employer has some sort of "transition" program such as flexible work schedules, reduced hours or ______ to a different role.

"Workers' vision of retirement is changing faster than employers' business ______," said Catherine Collinson, president of TCRS. That makes it ever more crucial for pre-retirees to take the steps today that will increase the ______ they can continue to work longer, if that's part of the plan.